I have edited the normal.awt, normal.awt-fr, and normal.awt-fr_FR, all located in /usr/shre/abiword-3.0/templates (with $ gksudo abiword), they are now OK, when I ask abiword a new document and select the "normal.awt" (without trailer) template, it works as expected (my font arial by default).

BUT, when I open abiword, or create a new document with it (w/o selecting a template), it opens a new file with the Time New Roman font !

The locate function cannot find any *.awt template but those in /usr/shre/abiword-3.0/templates.

Any help welcome, or is abiword only deserving the trash bin ?

Abiword uses xml files for all of its configuration setting.

You can see them in (#1), /usr/share/abiword-3.0/templates. They all have the .awt extension.

The "normal" templates (#2)) control the aspects of run of the mill paragraph text. Headings, footers, etc. may have their own template files, or the defining characteristics of each, in this ultra-configurable application, might have a template of their own

header1.awt
header2.awt
header3.awt
footer.awt
blocktext.awt
plaintext.awt
etc....

I don't know. You can find out.

A cheap and easy way to change the default font is to change the xml file. (#3)The gksudo is to grant root permission so the file can be edited by mere mortals.

If you know the exact name of the font family, you delete Times New Roman (#4) and replace it with Arial, or Comic Sans, or whatever is the name.

There is no error correction so if you don't hit it exactly the application might suffer a brain aneurysm...I don't know. You can find out.

Further down the line (#5) is the font size. This is more straight forward. Replace the numeral with the one of your choosing.

Save, exit, and test.

The more complicate method isObviously changing moe to your username (nx if not a harddrive installation)

2. Create a new document.
3. Choose from a font list what font you wish to have as the default font.
4. Save this blank document as an .awt file in “Templates” directory /usr/share/abiword-3.0/templates

and 5.
to put it back to the proper ownership.

The locate doesn't find anything because, out of the box, the database has not been created.This creates/updates the database, and then locate away to your heart's content.

Good luck

Put the normal.awt template in ~/.config/abiword/templates ("~" being your home directory).

I found AbiWord ok for small docs but not for bigger ones (say beyond 5 pages) where I occasionally ran into issues with corrupted files (may have improved with newer versions, I haven't used it in a while). The good thing is that you can at least recover the text as it saves to an uncompressed XML format. Where I did find AbiWord useful is for converting documents from the command line as it reads and writes formats which other utilities (e.g. pandoc) don't.

Markus's suggestion for location might be better....

It is certainly less drama.

Sorry posts overlapped and I hadn't seen Moe's reply before posting mine...


abinormal.png... somehow reminds of "Young Frankenstein"...

Something else Abiword is good at: in contrast to all other word processors I've used, it exports relatively clean HTML (without a lot of proprietary cruft) - in case you ever need that...

Great minds run the same path...or is that Abby Normal minds?